Random Thoughts

White River Rafting in Parys

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:38:08 GMT

On Sunday it was Raveen's birthday, so to celebrate we all headed to Parys for some white river rafting down the Vaal river. It was an early morning, we had to be there at 8:30, so we dragged ourselves out of bed at 6 and hit the road.

It was a pleasant trip and we arrived there just in time to hit the water. These rafts were different than the ones I had used in Austria and in Clarence. They were two person rafts rather than the 8 man things I had experienced before. This made things a little trickier as it was just you and your partner in the there, without a guide to help you around the tricky bits.

I joined up with Retha in one, Pieter and Raveen grabbed another and we all sorted ourselves out. Steering this thing was a mission! The guide told us that the nickname for this type of raft was a "divorce boat" and we quickly found out why. One person rowing forward while the other rows backwards lead to a lot of arguments. All the couple were shouting at each other and cries of "Left! Left! No, the other left!" echoed across the river.

Eventually we got going and we cruised down the river. It was good fun, we went across 3 largish rapids and a whole bunch of smaller ones. And towards the end we were getting pretty good at steering the thing! We also managed to not fall out, even though we did get stuck on rocks a couple of times.

We spent two hours cruising down the river, splashing each other and rowing like maniacs. Afterwards we went to a restaurant and ate steak and drank wine. Then it was back home were we collapsed and went straight to bed. Rowing really tires you out!

500 books!

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:58:07 GMT

I just received my latest order of 3 books. And with these 3 books extra my library at home finally hit the 500 mark! Half a millennium of books! I am so proud...
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/bishopza

Buying an HD TV

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:03:50 GMT

I have been considering getting a High Definition ( HD ) TV for a while now. It is not that I need one… I just want one. Shiny new toys makes me happy . The big problem however has been that the TV alone means nothing, you also need to get a HD signal from something. And that means a Blu ray player, Xbox, or something similar. Which will cost an additional 4000 on top of whatever the TV costs. So I resisted the buying impulse and watched my normal old TV. But then I started doing some research and found that my trusty old MVIX media player ( www.mvix.co.za ) can output a HD signal! That meant that I could download high quality shows from the internet and then watch it on the big, beautiful TV for free!

So on Monday I wandered into the Hi-Fi corporation with Retha to check out all the TVs on sale. And there were a LOT! After looking at a couple we went back home where I did some thinking.

My first problem was that I was not actually convinced I wanted a TV. I NEVER watch actual television… I play games, watch downloaded content and play DVDs. So forking over all the money for a TV license each year just blows. I could get around this problem by buying an enormous PC monitor instead of a TV. You pay about the same amount for a TV and a PC monitor of the same size! But eventually the cons of a monitor just got too many – you need to buy separate speakers, you cannot plug a playstation into it without a convertor and you cannot easily get something bigger than 26'. So it had to be a TV.

With this decided, we headed back to the shops to find me a TV. Here I discovered that all the Tvs in my price range are "HD Ready" instead of "Full HD". Some surfing on my cellphone did not turn up any clarity ( and since there was no 3G connection in the store, it was damn slow ), so I decided to leave it and head back home. Why should I take a HD Ready when I put all that money down, for that amount of cash I want the full thing! Back home I did some more research. And it turned out that HD Ready was actually fine. The Full HD thing only becomes important if you have a screen of bigger than 40'. I was looking at the 32' range, so it should be fine! We went back to the shops…

Knowing that I wanted a 32' HD Ready LCD TV helped me narrow my range down a little. Still, I spent nearly an hour walking from set to set trying to figure out which one looked better. Eventually I decided on 2 sets that I liked, a Sony and a LG. Another 15 minutes and I decided on the LG. By this time the salespeople were circling around us like vultures. Any shopper who spent as long as I did was bound to buy something! I signaled the one guy over and told him to ring up the LG. ""No", he said. "I cannot sell you that set. For that price you can get something MUCH better". And then he led me over to a Sharp.

I was immediately suspicious. How can the guy just shoot down one of his own products like that? But he started going on about the features and how cool the Sharp was. I was not 100% convinced, so I made the salesman move the TV next to the other big ones so that I could see the quality for myself. He obliged… and even fetched the Sony I was considering as well! With all my options neatly arrayed in front of me, playing from the same source I could finally make a decision. And the Sharp was definitely looking better than the others. So I bought it!

Back home I unpacked and set up. And then I discovered that my Mvix can only output in 420p… which is normal TV resolution L I was not happy, but at least I had a big TV for if I need it in the future. I was also so tired that I did not really care anymore. I went to bed exhausted. Shopping really drains you!

The next morning I woke up with a brilliant idea, I knew how to fix the problem! And sure enough, the Mvix could output at 420, 720 AND 1080! I was just too tired the previous day to see it! I loaded up a 3.5 gigabyte nature documentary to test things out… and it was awesome. Crystal clear picture that looked like a moving photo, brilliant colors… it was everything I wanted! So color me happy, all that running back and forth was actually worth it in the end

During all of this Retha was with me, giving her opinion on which TV looked better and which picture looked sharper. I am sure after a while she wanted to kick me. The third time I went back to the same shop in the same day must have been harsh, or when I could not stop blabbing on about 720 vs 1080p resolution over lunch. But she never complained and helped me get through my obsession. She is awesome.

The Journal Restarts

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 10:33:27 GMT

I have really let the journal go this past year. I have just been too busy to write things up! But then my birthday came along and I had to make my usual birthday list. Some people make new year's resolutions, I make birthday lists. When I turned 27 I had to make a list of 26 big events I had during my 26th year. When I turned 30 I had to make a list of 29 things, etc. If you actually sit down and go and look at the last year that has gone by, there has been a lot of significant things. Not all of them pleasant, but all of them exciting.

But I have a terrible memory and this year, without a journal to remind me of things, I really struggled to get my list done! I forgot some pretty major events as well, which just sucks. If I forget things within the year that they happened, there is no way I will remember anything in 10 years time. So I am starting the journal up again in a different format. This is not going to be a day to day journal, this is just for me to capture the great events… the list contenders for the year. I enjoy writing, so I will write the posts up as usual, there is just going to be a lot less of them and it is going to be pretty sporadic. Still, I need to get 32 posts minimum in the next year… I better start planning some cool stuff!

Usa trip part 1

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:12:58 GMT

I am in the USA on business again. And since this means I have time to blog, here goes :) This is a confused and rambling post... my apologies. I feel very rusty.

----

The one big difference on this trip was that the client was willing to pay for me to fly business class. Yay! The trip is to Detroit until Friday, then Chicago until Wed. And then back home.

The flight went pretty well. It is awesome to just walk past the entire queue and check into the business class counter :) The business lounge is nice too. Soft chairs, few people... free snacks. There are baskets of chips and sweeties standing around and a fridge full of drinks and you can just help yourself. Same thing with the getting on the plane - I could just walk past the rows and rows of people and go right to the front. This is the life!

On the plane the seats are huge. It is like they took out every second row of chairs. I can't even touch the seat in front of me with my feet if I lay on my back! The seat also has a whole bunch of buttons, you can make it lie completely flat when you want to take a snooze, it changes into a complete bed!

As we sat down they gave us menus and we could select our starter, main and desert - and it was awesome food. Restaurant quality! I could not even finish the steak, it was that big!

When we arrived in America, the business class people could also get off first, so we could get to the front of the queue at immigrations. In this case it did not save me that much time, I was the only foreigner on board, everyone else just went to the American queue. Oh, I flew Delta by the way, so I scored nothing on my Voyager miles :(

I then sat around in the airport for 2 hours until my connecting flight to Detroit, flew here and discovered that they did not load ANYONE's baggage on the plane! Losers. So I decided to wait around till the next flight arrived, hoping that they loaded the suitcases in there. 2 hours later, still no suitcase. So I gave my details and went to the hotel. Lucky I have learned my lesson on previous trips and I packed some clean underwear in my carry on luggage.

The hotel is different than the places I usually stay. Less fancy, but a LOT better. There was a free dinner that the owner cooked herself, free internet access ( yay ) and free breakfast now this morning. For breakfast I had Kellogs Frosties and a hard boiled egg. You basically walk into the kitchen and help yourself, very nice.

I went to reception early in the morning and my suitcase was there! Yay! And everything was inside that needed to be inside. So I showered and got ready for my first day of work.

I must have had 6 people come to me and ask for help on the trip. Old ladies who want me to help load their trolleys. Confused old grandfathers who did not know which gate to go to. Chinese grannies that cannot speak english and who I have to talk to in sign language... very weird!

London - part 4

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 12:55:06 GMT

On my final full day in London I decided to go shopping. I caught a tube, went into town and went from shop to shop, merrily swiping my credit card. This took up most of the day and then I headed home to drop off all the purchases. Then it was back on the train again to meet up with Xen. Tonight we would go out to the ice bar!

When you book for the ice bar, you are given a 30 minute window during which you are allowed into the place. You have to be there on time, else you simply lose your booking. They let you in, and then exactly 30 minutes later they kick you out and let the next group of patrons in. This is a brilliant business plan. No bums taking up seats and not spending money, a fresh crowd every half an hour and of course an enormous income from all those entrance fees.

We lined up outside the door at 6:30 and each received a blue parka to protect us against the cold. Then into the bar we went! The place was pretty small, about the size of my house, with a bar on one side and seats against the other walls. And everything inside is made out of ice. We made our way to the bar where we received ice glasses filled with some delicious vodka and… other stuff... who cares, there was vodka! We happily played with all the ice around us. I did some testing to see if I would stick to the bar if I licked it ( the answer is no ) and had a good time.

After 3 double shots each, we were done and we left. Xen wanted to go clubbing, but I wanted food! So we decided to go to Soho and find some food and fun. It took us a while to find the place, the vodka was making things a little blurry, but eventually we discovered the Soho Pizzaria! But we did not want pizza, so we kept walking. After wandering for a while, and almost stumbling right into a fight, we found a nice little place with an upstairs dining area. Here we quickly settled down with some Thai chicken pies, two glasses of wine and some more vodka.

We had a good chat over dinner and discussed women, philosophy and the pro’s and con’s of living in the UK. This ran a little later than we thought it would and I managed to convince Xen not to go clubbing after. We needed to leave before 11 so that we could catch the last train home and I was not interested in paying all those pounds for 1 hour of clubbing! So we made our way home and into the neighborhood pub. Here we had a beer and shot each and then decided to go home. I slept very well that night…

The next day I spent on the couch, just chilling until it was time to head to the airport. A taxi picked me up and dropped me at Heathrow where I finished some last minute shopping in duty free before boarding the plane back to South Africa.

Some photos from the ice bar behind the cut!

Ice furniture…

I look like Santa’s little helper 

Xen

I demonstrate my mighty ice melting fist of fury

Icy Shots

Icy dude

London - part 3

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 12:16:53 GMT

I woke up the next morning wondering where the hell I was. It was freezing, my bed seemed to have shrunk, I was starving and something outside the window was going “whooooooo”. Then it all came back to me… I was in London, sleeping on Xen’s couch, and I was on leave. Yay! I was on leave! I went back to sleep.

When I woke up again I cracked open one eye and peeked out from under the duvet. There was ICE on the window! And a freezing wind was blowing outside, killing all life! So I went back to sleep.

My stomach growled me awake the third time. I was ready to eat the leather couch I was sleeping on, so I decided to get up. A quick rummage through the kitchen turned up a loaf of bread, which I chewed on as I started surfing on my laptop. It is blazing fast! Xen owns a 24 MB line for which he pays about a sixth of what I pay for my 1 MB line! I spent that day rediscovering the internet. With speeds like that I could actually enjoy youtube and play with Google Earth! Every now and then I would glance down at my torrents and get a warm little glow from the 700kB/s streaming down.

I spent the entire day just surfing and napping, waiting for the evening to come around. We were planning to go to the theatre that night! Xen mailed me early in the morning from work and asked that I bring along an umbrella, as it was sure to rain that evening and he had learned to work around this nasty weather. Eventually it was time to go and I set off to Victoria station again… without the umbrella. It’s been a long afternoon and two naps since I received that email and I completely forgot about it. Xen was not impressed when he met me and I did not have the brolly…

We went to see Avenue Q. This is almost a grown up version of Sesame Street. Actors with puppets walk around on stage and teach the audience about life. But instead of your ABCs, you are instructed in one night stands and the meaning of purpose. The show was brilliant. I cannot remember the last time I laughed that hard in a theatre. And with catchy tunes like “Everyone’s a little bit racist” and “The internet is for porn”, everyone was humming their favorite at half time. The show was so good that I even forked over 16 pounds at the end to buy the soundtrack.

As we left the theatre, we walked straight into a storm. Water was just bucketing from the sky and through the pouring rain I could read Xen’s lips as he said “I told you so”. We ran until we got the tube and then argued all the way to the end of the line about the umbrella. Xen insisted that he sent me 2 more emails just before I left to remind me to bring the umbrella. I insisted that I only received 1 email, and it was early in the morning. We were still arguing about it when we exited the underground and ran the bus stop… where the bus was just pulling up!

All bad feelings were forgotten as we hopped on and sat down on the warm, dry seats. “You know”, said Xen, ‘We are really lucky that we caught this bus. There is another one on this route that turns up ahead and that is the wrong way to go.” He had barely finished speaking when the bus started turning. We were on the wrong bus! We jumped out at the next stop and ran all the way back to the first one, getting wetter by the second. At the bus stop we resumed our debate about whether or not Xen had reminded me to bring the umbrella and who was to blame for this whole mess. Then the rain changed to ice.

I am not used to ice rain. I can understand hail, and I have seen snow a couple of times now. But these little slivers of ice that fell from the sky and froze everything was new. It sucked. Then another bus approached! But it had an “Out of Service” sign on the front. So we stood there and waited some more. “I told you to bring the umbrella”, Xen muttered, as the rain got even colder. I was saved from answering by another bus approaching, the right one this time, with no stupid signs! We jumped on board.

As we defrosted the stupid umbrella subject kept coming up. I was tired of this dumb thing by now. Besides, it’s not like one umbrella would have kept us both warm and cozy all the way! I was explaining once again that I did not receive that email when Xen looked up and said “We missed our stop”. This meant another long jog through the freezing night until we finally made it back home.

Here I wrapped myself in the duvet and checked my mail… 2 unread emails from Xen... “Bring the brolly” and “Please remember the umbrella”. Both arrived 15 minutes after I left the house. Disgusted with the whole icy mess, I went to bed… couch I mean.

--To be Concluded--

London - part 2

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 09:40:02 GMT

After the previous day’s excitement, the next day in London was a lot calmer. I did not get lost for one thing… for another, everyone seemed to accept that I was leaving the project, so I just sat in the meetings and made comments without any work being assigned to me. That was nice, more meetings should be like that. At the end of the day the team leader took us all out to dinner. We were going to the Bierodrome!

The Bierodrome is a German beer hall in London. We caught a taxi ( I did not know you could fit 8 people in one of those, it is just like home! ) and found the restaurant without too much trouble. Once inside I had a look at the menu. Beer! Beer! Beer! Such a wide and exciting selection! I started out with a Leffe, something I remember from my trip to France and it went down smooth and nice. This was followed by a Witbier which, as you can guess, is a white beer. This is brewed from wheat and tastes like lemons! Yummy! After this I had a peach beer, followed by another white, then another Leffe, then another peach to even things out. I had a good time! That night I slept like babies are supposed to and drunkards usually do.

The next 3 days I had leave and I was meeting up with Xen to have some fun. I checked out of the hotel and somehow managed to navigate my way to Victoria station. Here I met up with Xen who took me to the Google offices for lunch. I signed in at reception and walked into office. For a second I was sure I was in the wrong place and I had somehow managed to end up in a child daycare facility. There were balloons on the ceiling, crayon drawings on the walls and colors everywhere! It looks like a 5 year old decorated the place. It was awesome.

Lunch was… it was… ok, I do not even have to words to describe it. The variety was incredible, the cakes were gorgeous and the side orders blew my mind. If I ever got the chance to go and work there, I will double my weight in a month, fast metabolism be damned. After all the lovely food, Xen kicked me out to go and wander the streets of London while he worked. I went to Oxford street and went up and down and up and down until I was ready to fall over. Then I discovered Hamleys… which was the biggest toy store I have ever seen. I must have spent 2 hours there, playing with every game, hugging every teddy bear and going “ooh” at every gadget. I bought myself a radio controlled dragonfly that flies by flapping it’s wings! How awesome is that! So far I have only managed to fly it into walls, but I am sure I will figure out how to turn it soon!

By this time my feet were killing me, so I started hunting for a seat somewhere. I finally found a Borders bookstore, a lovely place filled with good reads and soft couches. Unfortunately every other footsore pedestrian in London had the same idea, and all the couches were all filled! I eventually found a seat in the “erotic fiction” section where I plunked myself down and pretended that I could not read all the titles around me. There were some dodgy books…

Six hours after I left the office, Xen finally contacted me and told me we could head home. I met up with him again at Victoria and we headed to his place. Here we stopped at the neighborhood pub for some food and then it was off to bed… I mean the couch. I am not used to walking this much, so I was hammered and just passed out straight into dream world.

--To be Continued--

London - day 1

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 17:17:13 GMT

I am currently in London. I had to come over to hand over a project to some of guys on Monday and Tuesday and then I applied for leave for the rest of the week. I am planning to meet up with Xen and see some of the sights around town. So far we got a night at the theater and a night at the Ice Bar planned. It is always good to mix your culture and your drinking nights ;)

Last night the airport was deserted. I guess most people don't fly so early in the year. The airport was looking good though! They have been building a lot these past couple of years and the new areas are very nice! I am impressed!

Anyway, the flight was good. I got some new magic pills that made the whole trip a breeze! I landed early this morning, cleared customs and took a taxi to my hotel. A rather pretty girl checked me in and handed over the key to my room. It's a nice room and as I was unpacking I realized that I forgot to pack my toothbrush! Damnit! My first meeting was this morning already, so I had a quick shower and then set off towards the office, hoping there would be some sort of toothbrush store on the way. I had a printed out map from google maps and I hoped that this would be enough to steer me to the office. It wasn't.

The first trick to using a map is to hold it the right way up. I did not apply this basic principle and I set off in entirely the wrong direction. I realized my mistake after a while and turned around and walked back past the hotel, trying not to notice the same girl behind the counter watching me walk by again with a smile on her face. I followed the map and then decided to take a shortcut to cut out the one corner. I walked on and discovered a pleasant little road that led me to a toothbrush shop. Yay! At least I could go and brush my teeth at work now! Then I walked some more... and some more and some more. It is friggin cold here! Each breath blasted the air ahead of me into a white cloud. It is funny how many women walk around in the mornings here. They all smiled at me, so either the old African Mojo is working, or else I looked like an idiot with my Google map and blue toothbrush...

I kept walking, but eventually had to admit that I was lost. I could not find a single road from my map! I was just about to give up and get a taxi when I finally recognized a road name. I hurried up the road... and ended up back in front of the hotel... where the girl behind the counter smiled at me again through the window. Damnit! I waved my new toothbrush at her, causing an even bigger smile, and kept walking. That probably wasn't the coolest thing I could have done, but I panicked.

Anyway, I decided to hide away my toothbrush and set off again, determined to get it right this time. In front of me was a little old English granny, determined not to let me pass her. The faster I walked, the faster she walked. I was not going to let a gray haired old bat beat me, so I sped up some more. But she must have been an Olympic walker in her youth, cause somehow she kept ahead of me. I finally managed to catch up with her when she stopped to check for traffic before crossing a road and I ran right past her. Victory! Looking left and right before crossing a road is for losers!

I started paying attention again to where I was walking to and this time I seemed to be heading the right way. I turned a corner and checked the map again. The office was somewhere ahead of me. Also ahead of me was a little old English granny... How the hell did she pass me? Obviously age and experience, not to mention a home town advantage, had trumped my illegal jaywalking. I watched her disappear off into the distance and gave up.

I finally found the office and went straight into a meeting where I spent the rest of the day fighting with people. Uhm... no, I am lying... I snuck out at some stage and went to brush my teeth in the bathroom. The rest of the day was pretty boring though. I am off to dinner now, will continue posting tomorrow.

Resolution

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:35:14 GMT

It was my birthday on Sunday and I made a simple resolution for this next year I am spending on Earth… “Do more fun stuff”. The past year was really rather gray… I attended no interesting events , did no amazing things and basically ended up with hardly any stories. This needs to change and the next year will be the Year of Adventure!

Last night I went to Monte Casino with Dean to go and see a movie. We bought our tickets and went into the cine when the movie started. But barely 30 minutes into the movie the power suddenly went off. Damn load shedding crap! I am tired of the power going out every night. Anyway, we sat there in the dark and were told that the movie will start again soon. We decided to give it 15 minutes and after the time was up we left the cine. Here we joined the long line of people at the ticket counter and received out complementary tickets to come back another night.

There was not much point in heading back home as we live in the same area as Monte, so the power will be out back home too. So we wandered around and discovered a pie shop that still had semi-warm pies. Two pies later I was feeling more at peace with the world and we decided to round the meal off with a nice desert. We bought some slightly soggy ice cream and then sat down to wait the power failure out. We had quite a lively discussion around what to do when you wake up in the morning and discover you are the last person on earth ( hint : you head to the nearest military base and get yourself some gear ) and managed to almost have a fight about whether it is a good idea to drive to Egypt when the planet is filled with zombies.

In the middle of the discussion a boy came up to us and offered us tickets to go and see a comedy show that was taking place at 8. He said that his parents had overbooked and he was going to hand these tickets over to us for free. I did a quick scan… it looked legit… but the power was bound to come up any minute and I was tired of sitting around in a mall. Then again… receiving tickets from a stranger and going to a show you had never even heard about is the very definition of adventure! So we decided to go. As it was 19:50 we had to run to get to the area where the show was being held, but we made it in time. As we stood in the queue we figured out that this was some famous international comedian called Jamie Kennedy that was performing tonight. He has a TV show and is apparently quite famous.

We took our seats and the show started. The big problem however was that the power was still out and they only had a single spot light, running off a generator, pointing at the stage. This spotlight blinded the poor performers completely and they were unable to see the audience, which really affected the performance. Most comics need to play off the crowd and to pick people to insult and bounce jokes off. The crowd was also a little bit too varied… everything from kiddies to grannies. About half the audience left when the first guy started swearing and going off about the evils of women. It was quite sad… they were both really good comedians, but the organization of the event was just shocking.

For the first day after making my resolution I did quite well!
Now what shall I do tonight…

Bluetooth

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 11:31:43 GMT

On Friday after work I headed to the pub for some after work drinks. I met up with Andra and we caught up on all the latest gossip and news. I noticed the manager setting up a big LCD screen on the wall and when he switched it on I eagerly checked it out. “Switch on your bluetooth on your cellphone and win prizes!” it announced. Seemed there was some sort of Johnny Walker promotion happening. Always eager to score free stuff I switched on my bluetooth and then forgot about it.

A little while later some pretty girls started walking around in the pub. They were dressed in short, red dresses and each one had a flickering blue ball stuck to the front of her dress. Hmm… nothing like a pretty girl in a sexy evening dress with geeky toys attached to her boobs… I quickly figured out that these must be the transmitters that would be sending the bluetooth messages out and started aiming my phone at their chests. In the space of 5 minutes I won 3 prizes ( and got some weird looks )

I sauntered over to the organizer ( who had some gadget that looked like a credit card machine ) and claimed my winnings. She typed in my cellphone number, followed by my winning number and I won… a shot of Johnny Walker. Well, three shots of Johnny Walker. I returned to the table… and promptly won 2 more prizes. The guy on the table next to us was starting to get very annoyed since he had not won a single thing. “Are you in IT?” he asked me, “Cause I think you are gaming the system”. I just laughed at him. The lovely ladies started going from table to table and urging more people to switch their cellphones on, which put a bit of a cramp in my winning streak. But it helps to receive these messages when you have a prototype cellphone with an industrial strength aerial  During the course of the evening I won 8 shots of whiskey!

It must be getting harder to hire these promo girls. In the past all they needed to know was which end of a bottle to pour from. Now they need to debug telecommunication protocols, know how to switch on bluetooth every brand of cellphone on the market and hotwire battery packs to get their transmitters working. At least a whole new genre of pick up lines can be born. “Hey baby, wanna pair bluetooth devices?”.

Hmm… I think I know why I am single.

Book

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 12:49:38 GMT

Years and years ago I found a book in the library. It was the first of a trilogy and I read it and I liked it and I eagerly awaited the next book. Sadly, the library never received the second book and I never got to read the end of the story.

Years passed…
*cut to a scene of falling leaves, changing seasons, pages blowing open in a book*

Then one night I had a dream about the book. I actually dreamt about reading it and when I got the end I suddenly realized that book 2 was nowhere to be found. I woke up and decided to find the trilogy and buy it! That is what the internet is for, right? But when the only thing you can remember is “there was some sort of a waterfall on the front cover”, that makes things rather hard. I also knew it was about someone from our world ending up on a fantasy world, occupying the body of a great swordsman. And for some reason the color blue kept coming up in my mind. Armed with these factoids I trawled the web, trying to find the elusive book. It should come as no surprise that I failed miserably.

Some more years passed…

Then today, while walking to my desk, I suddenly remember the book’s name. “The seventh swordsman”… or something like that. A quick bit of googling later and there it was “Amazon.com: Reluctant Swordsman (Seventh Swordsman, Book 1)”. The covers were wrong, but it was the right book! I could finally find out what happened next! Strangely enough the books are by Dave Duncan and I am sure I don’t like his writing at all! But some more investigation turned up that the guy I don’t like is David Drake… too many Ds! Argh!

Anyway, I went to take2.co.za… and the books were not there. I tried Kalahari.net… no luck. I finally found the author’s website where I learned that the books were currently out of print! Nooooo! Foiled just as I was about to make it! But there was still hope… I went to Alibris.com, an online second hand book store. And they had tons of copies!

But there was a catch. Each book would only cost me R20.00, but the shipping would be R130.00… per book! So that is R60 for the trilogy, but R390 to get it to me! And even worse, shipping takes 2 to 4 weeks, but they warn their customers that the books usually get delayed in transit for up to 45 days! ARGH!

The quest continues…

Good shows

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 11:16:59 GMT

I had to bring in my collection of shows to work today so that everyone could grab what they wanted. The biggest seller of course was Monday night’s episode of Heroes Season 2 episode 6. But there are some other good ones as well…

Here is my list of “cool shows to watch”

Dexter

Synopsis: He’s smart, good looking, and he’s got a great sense of humor. Michael C. Hall stars as Dexter, everyone’s favorite serial killer. Miami forensics expert by day and murderer by night, this serial-killer killer is making the world a better place –one homicide at a time.

Me : This show is brilliant and my favorite at the moment. It is funny, it is griping, it is awesome. Season 1 was fantastic and season 2 is now running. Watch it!

Drawn Together

Synopsis: In this spoof of reality TV shows such as The Real World and Big Brother, eight distinct (and dysfunctional) cartoon archetypes are flung together and forced to put up with each other. Through various misadventures ranging from scintillating to shocking to downright strange, these eight roomies probe each others' personalities and push each others' buttons.

Me : This is an animated show. Funny enough to make you hurt yourself laughing, crude enough to make you blush, pushes the envelope hard enough to make your jaw drop. Not for sensitive viewers, that is for sure.

Beauty and the Geek

Synopsis: Once upon a time, there were attractive women who got by on their appearances, and intelligent men with limited social skills, who lived in a house together, learning from each others' weaknesses and strengths. By the end of their journey, these diverse men and women received lessons in confidence, equality, and dignity. No longer were they just the Beauty and the Geek.

Me: This is the only reality show I enjoy. 8 Beauties and 8 Geeks are placed in a house and they have to learn from each other. It is hilarious to watch the Beauties try to change a tire on a car, or to see the Geeks crash and burn when they have to collect phone numbers in a club. Needless to say, I also enjoy this because I am a geek myself and identify way too much with the other geeks. Not only is it funny, but it is also sad and sweet! I have been teary eyed a couple of times. The best thing about this show is that it actually seems real, with genuine emotions and events.

How I Met Your Mother

Synopsis: Shown in a series of flashbacks, a man tells his children the story of how, as a twentysomething guy looking for love, he met and married the woman who would be come his wife & their mom.

Me : My one and only guilty sitcom pleasure. On season 3 right now and just as funny as when it started.

Californication

Synopsis: David Duchovny heads up the cast in this comedy about a novelist with sex and drug addictions who is struggling to raise his daughter half the time, while having problems with his ex-girlfriend.

Me: A very adult show, be warned. Funny, witty and smart.

Reaper

Synopsis: Everything changes in Sam's life once he turns 21 and finds out the reason his parents let him get away with so much was because they sold his soul to the devil before he was born. Satan explains to Sam that he must serve as his bounty hunter, tracking down souls that have escaped from Hell. Along with his friends and his vessel of the week, Sam prepares to face his destiny as the "reaper".

Me: I haven't quite made up my mind about this one yet. It’s a little like the early Buffy days. The episodes seem very formulaic, but it is light hearted and good fun.

Popular things I dont like

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 14:23:05 GMT

Let me jump on the meme wagon with this one!

Ten Popular Things that I Hate

1. Facebook
I really don’t like Facebook. I am on there simply due to peer pressure, but I find it stupid and shallow. Unlike Livejournal where you actually get to know people, Facebook seems to be there simply for bragging and spying on others. And for the last time, I do NOT want to join your damn Vampire army! I wonder if there is some way of denying all requests except for friend requests…

2. Beer
I cannot stand the taste of beer. It is the vile, bitter piss of the devil. I like sugary, “girly” drinks and cocktails. And if that makes me less manly then that is too bad.

3. Vegetables
I am sure most people don’t find vegetables popular, but everyone seems to want to convince me to eat them. I don’t like them, leave me alone! I can eat “normal” vegetables… like carrots and pumpkin and peas. But the alien ones like cauliflower and spinach are disgusting! And I don’t care if it is covered in your grandma’s secret cheese sauce and therefore you think it is delicious! It is still cauliflower! I don’t offer you a turd covered in chocolate sauce, do I?

4. Radio jokes
I do not like Wackhead Simpson. I think he is an idiot and his jokes are stupid. And I have probably heard the morning traffic joke 3 years ago. I don’t want you to re-enact everything you heard on the radio this morning. If I was interested I would have listened to it.

5. Babies
They are smelly and noisy and easily breakable. I don’t want to hold the baby; I don’t care how cute it looks. Bring it back when it can talk and we can see how it goes.

6. Angry boy bands like Linkin Park
They are noisy. I don’t like bands screaming at me.

7. Sport
I don’t play any sports and I don’t watch any on TV either. A good example is the rugby world cup. The entire country stayed up and cheered as the national team went ahead and won the world cup. I went to bed and read a book.

8. “Celebration” holidays
This includes things like Christmas, Valentine’s day, New Years and my birthday. I don’t like being forced to be jolly and be spend time with family. V day is too much pressure and New year’s is always a disappointment.

9. SMS speak
I can understand the need to shorten your words so you can fit the message into the sms. But then you get a message like this.
“I R really dspointd in u. I thought we were freinds ”. The person on the other side might really be disappointed… but if I get a message like this I just want to laugh at their poor spelling.

10. Drinking so much you pass out
I enjoy getting hammered as much as the next guy. But if I cannot remember what I did the next day, it seems like a bit of a waste. I might as well have stayed home and taken sleeping pills then. The trick is to find the magic spot where you lose inhibitions and turn into a great dancer without crossing the line into taking off your pants.

Tech Ed

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 08:55:18 GMT

I returned yesterday from the Tech Ed conference in Sun City. This is a big Microsoft conference where developers get together for 3 days and they present all the latest and greatest software to us. Lots of alcohol also gets consumed and a good time is generally had by all. It is very expensive, but this year we managed to convince management to let us come. I picked Chris up Sunday afternoon and we drove through to the Lost City.

Once we arrived we went to our hotel where we were told that check in only started at 3. So we went and registered for the conference in the meantime. This went rather painlessly and we each received a bag full of goodies and an access card to all the events.
With the registration done we still had some time to kill so we went back to the hotel and settled on the deck with some drinks. I starting sorting through all my loot and was disappointed to find that the best thing we received was actually the bag itself. The rest was all marketing crap  Still, I had a glass of Southern Comfort and life was good. I even saw some girls wandering around the area, which was a very good sign. Tech Ed is a VERY male event and the prospect of seeing more than just male geeks was a pleasant one.

Eventually 3 o’clock rolled round and we joined to queue to get booked in. But once we got to the front, they could not find our names on the computer! It turned out that we were at the wrong hotel and that our accommodation was actually down the road somewhere.
So we picked up our bags and walked down the road to the next hotel... which was not our hotel either! Another hotel down... still not ours! We kept trudging down the road and eventually we reached the correct hotel… where I felt my heart sink. There was a queue stretching out of the front door and into the road! Even worse… they were ALL guys! It was a never-ending stream of sausage winding its way up the road.

We joined the testosterone loaded stream and stood there in the sun as everyone inched forward. Then one of the sun city buses pulled up next to us, and it was filled with girls! And I do mean filled, they were bulging out of the windows! The doors opened, showing a stunning collection of young flesh. I felt a slight breeze around me as 80 guys sighed in anticipation. Three old men climbed out of the bus and slowly shuffled towards the front door... the doors closed... and the bus drove away again. Back up the road to the land of smooth, tanned skin and pretty smiles. Argh! Why did the company have to book us into the cheap and nasty hotel!

We finally got booked in and then went to the keynote opening speech. It was boring. After the speech there was the opening party at the valley of waves. This was a lot more fun that listening to speeches! There were rows and rows of buffet tables, bean bags scattered across the sand and girls handing out booze! This was a pretty good evening, except for the fact that the only thing to drink was Castle beer and wine. There was NOTHING else! And I hate beer! So I drank wine, got very depressed and went to bed early.

Monday morning I got an emergency call from work. For some reason Murphy had decided to come to work and everything was falling apart. I spent most of the day doing my normal work, expect that it was through a pathetic connection and took ages! Tuesday was better and I actually managed to attend some sessions. These were ok and I got some nice tips as well as some info on upcoming changes from Microsoft.

Tuesday evening it was the closing party and this time there was a much bigger variety of alcohol! Someone must have complained about the beer on Sunday night! They had a DJ and everyone got onto the dance floor and got down. I stood on the outskirts of the crowd and looked over the mob… and there were ONLY guys! 300 guys bumping and grinding and strutting their stuff. So I decided not to dance…

I drank, talked to my friends and ended up gambling after the party. Note to self… don’t gamble when you are drunk. I managed to lose a lot of money. I guess Lady Luck was a little drunk as well. On Wednesday we drove back home where I collapsed into bed and slept like a log.

All in all it was a good trip. I ate well, learnt something and got to spend 3 days out of the office. Now I just need to convince the powers that be to let me go again next year!

unicorn

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 07:20:17 GMT

I need some input.

I want a get a new tattoo and this is what I am thinking of getting. Take a close look and tell me what you think.

Other opinions behind the cut.

The first reaction I got on showing this to some friends was "Why is the horse doing ballet?".
This is NOT the reaction I want to a tattoo! I asked more people and they seemed to be split about halfway between saying that it was too feminine and saying that it looked ok. The biggest problem seems to be lying with the way it’s legs is positioned. The hind legs look like they are dancing, the front legs look… limp wristed.

Maybe I can get a photoshop expert to take the image and modify it slightly to have a more masculine flavor…

So what do YOU think?

Book scanning done

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 07:40:00 GMT

Last night I finally finished scanning all my books! Things were a little more complicated than I anticipated, but I persevered and I can now give you the following. http://www.librarything.com/catalog/bishopza Tadaa!

There were some problems… Some stores think it is a good idea to place a sticker right over the barcode. And on the older books this sticker has achieved a bonding with the book on a molecular level. There is no way to separate the sticker short of nuclear power. I got around this by entering the number by hand. Another problem was that some of my books are so old that they don’t actually have a bar code. I guess they were printed before the scanner was invented…

Then there was the problem of where to host all of this information. All I had was a long list of ISBN numbers, I needed some handy website to look up the book detail and to display the information in a sexy way. Google really disappointed me here. It was only finding about 1 in 7 of the numbers – pathetic! I am really sad I could not use Google, I was looking forward to the “search inside the book” feature. How cool would it be to describe a scene… this short fellow has to toss a ring into a volcano… and have Google tell you that you are looking for Lord of the Rings? Facebook just plain did not work. It would find the books, I click “add to library” and nothing happens.

After some searching around I found librarything. The answer to all my wishes! I loaded my ISBN number and got a 100% success rate. It found ALL my books! Part of the reason for this is because they allow you to specify which website to use for the lookup. A combination of amazon.com, amazon.co.uk and the Australian National Library seemed to cover all my books. I like the interface, I like that it is still developing and adding new features all the time, I like the huge user base that help out by uploading different covers for the books and I LOVE the fact that they allow you to export your books again into a csv file ( something that most other sites do not offer )

So far my only complaint is that it insist on sorting your book by title when you first log in. This is useless to me. A trilogy should be grouped together, but this is splitting it up across the entire library! I may be able to use tags to get around this, but this is not ideal. Maybe I should just go and rename all the titles of the books to contain the name of the series first? Hmmm….

Anyway, this is a work in process. At least everything is electronic now and I can get on with rating, changing covers, adding tags and writing reviews. Yay!

Books

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 10:31:54 GMT

I own a lot of books. And I mean a LOT of books. I had two bookcases in my house and both filled up with my favorites. So filled up that books were stacked on top, to the sides, and behind other books. Added to this was a big plastic box filled with the slightly lower grade books and finally a cardboard box filled with the rubbish. Yes… I keep rubbish books as well…

Last week my brother donated another bookcase to me, so the plastic box was opened and the books inside set free. During this process I discovered some really nice books that I had not read in ages. I don’t know how they ended up in the “ok” box, some of these were pretty damn good! This made me realize that I actually had no idea what books I own anymore. There are simply too many of them! Fortunately, thanks to the internet, there are a couple of solutions available to catalogue my growing library.

I first found a facebook version, Books iRead (http://utulsa.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2406120893).
This allows you to upload and rate all your books. IT is pretty nice, but I am not really a Facebook junkie. Then Google came up with an addon to Google book search (http://books.google.com/) called “My library”. You can search for books ( like any google search ) and then add the books to your library straight from the search, adding a rating while you add it.

This was all good and well, but I soon realized that I simply own too many books to go and search and add all of them manually. So I investigated some more. I soon found out about the ISBN number – this number is the barcode that is printed on every book and it uniquely identifies each printing of the book. So all the “Lord of the Rings” printed in 1990 by a certain publisher while have the same barcode. Even better… you can throw this number into Google and out comes the book, complete with cover picture, author information, etc! If you can generate a file with all the numbers of your books, you can plug this file into any decent piece of software and it should be able to look up all the book information you need. And once I have this list it will be easy to just update it whenever a new book comes along.

Now the only problem left was getting all my books scanned for codes and entering this into a spreadsheet somewhere. I am too lazy to do this manually, so I shopped around and finally found a place that sells barcode scanners. I placed my order and it was delivered today! Yay! Time for some serious scanning and uploading tonight! Once that is done I can… uhm… scan my groceries or something with this thing…

Stay tuned for the next episode, where the big scanning begins

Pants

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 10:47:31 GMT

On Saturday Dean and I went to help Claire move. She had bought a nice place a couple of weeks ago, but since it was only becoming available in 2 weeks time she was moving back in with her parents first. Most of the move was done already; she just needed help with some of the heavy lifting that was left. Being brave and brawny men, we volunteered to go and help.

The move itself went pretty fast, there were really only 2 or 3 things to load and we quickly tossed these onto her dad’s 4X4. Afterwards we had to go and drop off a washing machine at her sister’s house and we all squeezed into the double cab. As Dean leaned back, something ripped… Somehow he managed to rip his jeans, right on the crotch! I guess the forces contained in his pants proved to be too much for the denim to handle…

We were planning to go out clubbing after the move, so this was a problem! It was not a small tear; he was basically showing the goods to the entire world each time he walked. We brain stormed some solutions – safety pins, staples, wearing an apron to cover everything up – but eventually decided to try our luck and head to the mall. It was late and the shops were bound to be closed, but it was worth a try, right?

We parked and ran inside, past the security guards who were busy closing the mall doors. Up ahead! A Mr Price! With a slowly lowering security gate! I applied a burst of speed and slid under the gate before it could be closed! Then I quickly started explaining the situation to the open mouthed staff. “My friend! Look at his pants! We need to buy him some pants, please!”
Dean assisted by flashing open his gaping tear, showing off some white thigh and blue underwear. This caused mouths to drop open even further.

After some more fast talking one guy finally took charge. He disappeared around the corner and we could hear him arguing with the boss. He was perfectly willing to help us out, but the supervisor was being hard assed and insisting that the till was closed and nothing could be done. So Dean charged around the corner pleading with her to please help us out. I don’t know if it was the sight of his open pants or the desperation in his voice that finally persuaded her, but she gave in and told us to go and find some pants. Yay! Mission accomplished! So Dean bought a pair of disgusting pants with a gazillion pockets all over them and we returned victorious.

Later that night we headed off to Doors for some hardcore clubbing. This was pretty fun, but raised a very big question for me. How the hell do you talk to a stranger on the dance floor? There was this cute girl dancing a little distance away from me and she looked fabulous! I have never seen anyone dance like that before! I really wanted to go and compliment her, but there was no way she would have heard what I said. Not that I was too sure what to say anyway. “I love the way you dance, how do you do that kicky thing because I fall over when I try that” seems a little lame… And by the time I drank enough courage brew to be able to approach her, she has disappeared. Maybe next time…

Work

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 05:27:59 GMT

Yesterday morning I woke up, expecting it to be a nice, quiet day at work. I brushed my teeth, had a shower and tried to decide what to wear. This turned out to be a difficult decision as nearly everything I own is in the wash. I finally settled on one of my going out shirts and decided I might as well dress up completely. So I dressed in my finest apparel and headed in to work to impress some girls. But while sitting in traffic I received a sms “Critical meeting at 8:00. You MUST attend”

I arrived at work and went straight into the boardroom where a very high powered meeting was just kicking off. Directors, Managers and CEOs all cluttered around a phone and looked up in relief when I came in. Some background… I wrote a system during the past 3 months for Audi of America to handle all their customer satisfaction surveys. It is online, used by 1100 dealers, updates daily and process almost a million records a month. This system has been running pretty smoothly, but the client wanted some extra reports, so I had extracted all my data and sent it to our data processing team to handle. They had issued their reports, and all their answers were different! Different answers from the same data! The client was not impressed by this and started questioning everything we had done up to now.

I know my system is right. I had spent many long nights making sure of this, but now I had to prove it to the client. I grabbed my laptop and moved into my ceo’s office, setting up next to her on her desk. Then we started checking, bouncing from laptop to laptop, and finding an answer to each and every discrepancy. I HATE this. I hate crunching numbers in my head. After the 20^th 372 coming up, I was ready to implode from all the maths. I prefer to write a program to do this crap for me! Think once and get it right and then just trust the formula!

Lunch time came around and we were still working and getting very hungry. So my boss waved her hand and summoned some food for us. I had always wondered what the powers eat for for lunch, so I eagerly awaited the sustenance of the rich. It turned out to be… chicken soup and rolls. At about 3 we started losing speed, so my boss waved her hand again and sent three PAs running through the office to find us sweets. They returned with a bag full of chocolates they stole from the marketing department! I want minions like these too!

We kept going and finally finished at about 20:00. 12 hours of figure checking! I was seeing little numbers floating in front of my eyes. But we proved that my website was correct and the data processing was wrong. Yay me! Now they got to go away and reprocess the data.

It was a weird day. I did not get to my desk even once and did not see anyone at work except for the boss. I think my funky outfit was rather wasted on her :(

Ants!

Tue, 15 May 2007 10:42:28 GMT

My house has been invaded by ants. I have been noticing more and more of them around, but it did not bother me too much as I don’t usually have any food standing around outside. I tend to eat everything and then lick the plate clean. And really, what are a couple of ants in the greater scheme of things? Especially with winter coming on, they will die off soon enough anyway.

Yesterday I went to the fridge to grab a snack. I opened the door and discovered thousands of them, eating my waffles and drinking my milk. How did the ants end up INSIDE the fridge!? Isn’t the thing supposed to be air tight or something? And who ever heard of an ant drinking milk? I have a suspicion that I have discovered a rare breed of artic ant that enjoys the cold and drinks warm milk to stay active. There is probably a row of little ant mugs standing at the back of the fridge with names on them. Next to the mittens and little bobble hats…

Seriously though, I have no idea how to get them out of the fridge… after all, I can’t just spray poison around on all the food. Maybe I should leave a tray of ice cubes outside the door and lure them out like that. I am also baffled on how they are getting in the fridge in the first place. Maybe there is a hole somewhere that I don’t know about… or else they just run inside when I am fetching food and looking the other way. Sneaky little buggers.

Diving

Mon, 14 May 2007 11:19:09 GMT

On Sunday I headed out to Bass Lake to start my Advance Diver course. Dean had convinced me that we should get this done so that we can dive anywhere we like, so we signed up for the course and dedicated ourselves to getting our qualification upgraded. There are some hassles involved in this… the dive shop is in Kempton Park which 30km away from me. Every Saturday you have to collect your gear, take it along to the dive on Sunday and then return the gear again on the Monday. So that is 3 long trips every weekend until you get it all done.

We drove out to Bass Lake ( close to Vereeniging, almost 80 km away ) and arrived there at about 11:30. Here we met up with the other divers and started setting up all our diving gear. It is strange diving in a lake after diving in the ocean so many times! While you have to take a boat out to a dive site in the ocean, here you basically just stand on the shore and jump in.

Our first dive we were using Nitrox instead of normal air, which allows you to stay down for longer and come up again faster. Since the only thing required for this qualification is to go down with the bottle on your back, we combined it with another course – Wreck diving. At the bottom of the lake was an old school bus and we had to swim around this and check it out, pointing at dangers, tie off points, sharp edges and entry points. This was harder than it sounds. I could see NOTHING dangerous about a rusty old bus! In the end the danger turned out to be that you should not swim under the bus, because you could get stuck. Duh… After doing the wreck dive we swam around a little longer and headed back. This was where we found out that diving hand signals are not universal. What I understood to mean “You guys swim around here for a while” actually meant “Follow me”. And what I though was “Where the hell are all the fish?” actually meant “Use your compass”. But somehow we managed to figure out what the instructor meant and we got back to shore.

For the second dive of the day we were doing Navigation. We were each handed a compass and told to practice on land before we go down and do it underwater. So we all put towels on our heads ( to block out the sights around us ) and walked around like idiots in a big square. This was easy… except for when you walk straight into a wall. With all the towel fun done we put on our equipment again and jumped into the lake. The first thing we had to do was determine how many fin strokes it take to travel 30 meters. One guy swam out with a rope and we swam along it and counted our strokes. I ended up on 21. Then we did the first test! We were in buddy pairs and we had to head out to a compass heading, then make a 180 degree turn and head back. In the buddy pair one person is supposed to look at the compass and navigate and the other person is supposed to watch the depth and make sure that you are swimming in a straight line. I headed out with Dean and immediately had problems. For some reason he kept swimming face first into the floor. I was holding on to his tank and swimming upwards with all my might just to keep him on a straight line! I think I sprained my back trying to keep him on the level because it is hurting a lot today! But we reached the end point, made our turn and headed back. Easy!

Part two of the navigation course we were told a compass heading and we had to swim out 30m, make a 90 degree turn, swim 30m, make another turn and so on until we completed a perfect rectangle. I was supposed to head out to 330 degrees and do left turns. So we headed underwater and set off. I had barely started swimming before I felt someone grab my fin. I stopped and turned around and there was no-one there… so I set off again and again felt something grabbing me. By this time I had completely lost count of how many fin strokes I had made so I just took a wild guess and kept swimming. Then something grabbed me again! It turned out to be the divemaster who told me I had gone far enough and I should turn right. Right? I thought I had to go left!? But he was in charge, so I changed my compass heading and headed right. I was happily finning along when my head suddenly broke the surface. Damnit! Unlike Dean, who goes bottom diving, I seem to swim up when I look at the compass! I headed down again and tried to remember if I did 14 or 18 strokes. I did 8 more for good luck and made my next turn. I had just started swimming again when suddenly a wall appeared out of nowhere in front of me! I put on brakes and looked at the damn thing. My square had turned into a triangle by now and I was completely lost. There was nothing around except water and one or two ugly fish. We swam around for a while and then gave up and came to the surface. I was only off the mark by about 10 meters! But the instructor was not happy about this though and told me I had to redo it. All this swimming around had seriously used up my air though, so I had to get out of the water and get a new tank of air before we did Dean’s square.

We went down and Dean started his rectangle. Things were going well, except for the fact that he still swam downwards, dragging me with him. We reached the first point and Dean stopped to get a new heading. While he was concentrating on his compass, I suddenly got a sinking feeling... He had simply stopped kicking and sunk like a rock! I tried to keep us afloat, swimming like a maniac, but it was not working, so I let him go and abandoned him to the depths. I watched him hit the bottom, where he sat down to finish twiddling with the compass. Then we were off again. Except for this sinking things went much easier this time around and we actually managed to get a full square done! Yay us!

Then it was my turn again… This time around things went much better and I did 3 sides of the square with no problems. On the final leg I saw the underwater grid where I was supposed to end up and I happily raced over to it… only to discover it was the wrong grid. Some frantic looking around produced another grid off to my right and I finned over. It was the wrong grid again! How many of these things were there!? The answer was 4, and I went to all 4 before I finally found my grid. By this time I was sick of compasses, sick of water and sick of swimming. Fortunately this rectangle was good enough to pass me, so we got out of the damn dam and headed home.

We got home at 7 that night. And let me tell you, 8 hours of swimming is a killer. I can barely walk today! Next weekend we have two more dives and then we will hopefully be done. I can’t wait to get back into the ocean again. Dam diving sucks!

Back again

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 10:54:09 GMT

Hello world.

Long time no post.

The reason for this is mostly because I have just been insanely busy!

Things seem to be calming down a little now, so hopefully I can get back into the posting habit now.

Read ya soon

G33K

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 09:00:52 GMT

This is going to be a geeky post, flee now if you need to!

I have recently signed up for a TorrentFlux account on a server in the USA. It is costing me about $8 a month, in exchange for which I get unlimited download of torrents to the remote box. Torrents are downloaded through a web interface to the box and then the downloaded files are available through FTP or even through straight HTTP. The speeds are friggin amazing. On average a torrent comes down at 300KB/s sometimes bursting to 900KB/s on well seeded torrents. I have had a 200MB anime episode download in a little less than 10 minutes. Using this service means I waste none of my bandwidth cap on uploads and through the FTP interface and some trickiness on my part, I can get amazing speeds back to my PC. I used to download about 6GB a month, now it is closer to 25GB.

With this amount of information coming down (most of it television series, anime and the like) I am struggling to watch everything that I am getting. And besides… the PC monitor is not really the best place to spend 26 hours watching shows. Sure, I can link up the PC to the TV, but that is a lot of hassle to connect and you need to keep getting up off your ass to load the next episode. So I started looking for alternatives…

After some research I decided that a DivX capable DVD player was the way to go. I could burn a series to DVD and then watch it from the comfort of my couch. The best solution however would be to get a DVD recorder with a hard disk drive. This way I could copy files from my PC to my DVD player without burning DVDs all the time! But DVD recorders with HDD are damn expensive… after some more reading of blogs and message boards, I found the answer. A DivX capable DVD player with a USB port. One of these babies can actually play files off a flashdrive through the USB port! And even better… an external hard drive can connect to the player through the same port and act exactly the same way! I already own a DVD player, but getting this extra one was worth it.

So I went shopping and bought a DVD player for R500, which is nice and cheap. It could play DivX and had a USB port. The remote allows fast forward, rewind, pause, etc, so it is just like watching a DVD.

I started my testing.

Playing files from a flashdrive – excellent! No stuttering at all, it is like watching TV. The problem is that you cannot fit much onto a flashdisk ( I only have a 500MB... that is 2 episodes )

Playing files from external HDD – problems. There is stuttering and audio goes out of sync. This could be because the HDD did not have external power though.

Playing files from burned DVD – excellent. No problems. But you have to burn DVDs all the time. If you are busy downloading, you cannot start watching the first few episodes while the rest download.

There were also other minor problems. Like the fact that the menu where you choose files cut off the filenames so you can’t see what the correct order is. I also had files encoded with some weird codec that did not play at all. You are supposed to be able to flash the DVD player to enable it to play new formats, but I cannot find a single website with firmware for the damn thing. Still, it was not a bad buy I guess.

While discussing my new purchase with some friends, one guy asked me why I did not go for a multimedia drive. A what?
A multimedia drive is an external hard drive with a built in media player and connectors at the back that allow you to link up to the TV. It comes with a remote and basically acts like a combo between a DVD player, a PC and an external hard drive. Sure, it can’t play DVDs, but I already own another DVD player!

I did some research again. The multimedia players that ship with a 250GB HDD all cost around R3000. But you can buy one that you can plug any normal, spare 3.5 HDD you may have lying around into for R1000. I finally settled on this one.
http://www.techdigital.co.za/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=ZZZ-MVIX-MV4000U
It is cheap, there is a local supplier that will handle warranties, it is easy to just plug in a bigger HDD in if you want to upgrade and there is a great website with regular firmware updates. It even functions as a normal external USB 2.0 hard drive! So I ordered it. The (slightly used) DivX DVD player will become a present to my brother for his birthday next weekend.

The multimedia drive arrived today. Yay! I cant wait to get home and test this thing out.

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Wed, 16 Aug 2006 10:59:35 GMT

Hello world.

I am back from my Contiki trip in Greece.
Posts galore will be pouring in soon, it was a good trip. It will be friends only posts, don't want some tour members stumbling onto all my gossip ;)

Here is an interesting little fact to wet your appetite...
I had 105 cocktails in 7 days.

Stay tuned.